“Wirth Watching” features Park City’s historic railroad past

A D&RGW locomotive, with four men standing or sitting on or by the pilot (sometimes called a cow catcher), no date. Photo: Nan McPolin Collection, courtesy of Park City Museum.

PARK CITY, Utah — Earlier this week, ABC4’s Craig Wirth featured Park City on “Wirth Watching” profiling the old mining town’s former railroad yard.

While the yard was removed roughly 30 years ago, it was the end of a line that ran from Park City to Echo Junction. Primarily carrying people and resources gathered from the mines, trains also transported skiers to Deer Valley as early as the late 1930s.

Wirth also featured a previous interview with WWII US Navy Veteran and former Union Pacific Railroad agent Fay Dearden, who recalled “The Day of the Runaway Train” when a train departed without its engineer.

“Someone looked out and saw the engine going,” Dearden recalled. “So we all went out the door, and down there about where the garage is there, or used to be there, is where his caboose was. The engineer took off on a dead-run trying to catch it and the rest of us jumped in the car and headed down, thought we’d catch it at the crossing down here, catch it there, and set the brakes on it. But when we got down there, all we got to see was the dust of the train as it tipped over going around the bend.”

So while the old train yard may now be buried beneath luxurious hotels and high-end shops as the town has continued its metamorphosis, the memories of Park City’s historic railroad past will run on forever.